Help Arrives!

 As I write, I can smell the pungent, fruity aroma of about twenty pounds of pawpaws in the foyer. I knew there would be a cost to my exuberance in hunting and harvesting 39 pounds of pawpaws.

I am blessed to have a friend who was willing to drive almost five hours to help me process them. Just another magical application of social networking...Anne, an old friend and fellow birdwatcher and foodie, saw my posts about the harvest and up and offered her services! It took me about two seconds to type back YOU BET!! When can you get here?

It turned out to be kinda late...about 10:30 on a Saturday night. Chet Baker stayed up to wait. He listened intently. He can always tell when someone's coming to visit.

The last time Anne visited, she brought two toys for Chet. He somehow knew they were in her suitcase, and he got down and dug for them until he found them, to gales of laughter all around. This night was little different. She put the toys on the kitchen table, and Chet invited himself up on her lap.

He commenced to sniffing around and quickly discovered the toys. I think he knew they were there all along.

Both were toast within a half hour, reduced to drifts of foam and Hollofil.

After a nice sleep, we started Paw Paw Processing Day with a great morning's birding from the tower. The view was spectacular, autumnal colors just aborning.

We held our own little Confusing Fall Birds workshop, with numerous appearances by Tennessee warblers

and their nearly identically-colored Doppelgangers, Philadelphia vireos (below). But note the vireo's bigger rounder head, much heavier blunt bill and shorter, heavier bright bluish legs.

There were lots of pretty magnolia warblers about

and a stunning fall parula, too. This is a spring parula, but ours wasn't much duller.

We could have stayed up there all day, watching for red-headed woodpecker flyovers, sharp-shins, sapsuckers...but there was work to do. 39 pounds of work to do. It was time to set up the Pawpaw Processing Plant.